A Soul Like Glass (Kingdom of Betrayal #4)

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

B ut not today.

I drop and twist, my left hand snapping out, my fingers closing around my hammer’s handle.

My forward drop takes me down onto Erik’s chest and out of the path of Griffin’s blade, which sails harmlessly through the air where my neck was located only a heartbeat earlier.

Glaive’s blade was a second slower than Griffin’s—not because she’s weaker, but because that’s undoubtedly how they time their executions.

But it gives me the barest moment to twist out of her path.

Only just.

The blade’s edge slices across my fur coat, cutting open the material and letting the freezing air in.

Then the hammer is in my hand and I’m swinging it upward.

Its handle clashes against the edge of Glaive’s sword, knocking it away from me.

The moment the hammer is in my hand, my power explodes across the clearing, lighting it up so brightly that the Celestial Star’s now-distant form disappears completely.

Strength floods me, every muscle in my body firing.

Swinging the hammer is effortless. Even though I’m aiming it backward, a move that would ordinarily be difficult and carry less power. But the hit I land against Glaive’s sword is so powerful that she’s knocked backward, stumbling and then sliding to right herself.

Her eyes have flown wide.

Now that I have full access to my power, I can sense everything within the clearing.

The gasp that leaves Glaive’s lips is a sound of both pain and shock as streaks of energy from my hammer ripple along her arm and chest.

I sense every shift of air, calculating that it will take Griffin another few heartbeats to recover her balance since her blade didn’t meet the resistance she was expecting.

It’s Glass I need to worry about in these next few seconds.

I swivel back to her as she launches herself at me across Erik’s body.

Oh, she’s fast. Much faster than the other two women, her body flying across the air even without her wings.

The compassion she revealed to me earlier was not weakness.

She leaps with incredible strength, her sword effortlessly drawn, and I picture the clean cut she intends to make through my neck.

She must intend to end this quickly.

I don’t need to adjust the trajectory of my hammer, allowing it to follow through so that it carves the air across my head and then forward.

With a shove, I allow it to fly forward and the handle to slide through my fingers.

The hammer’s large head smacks into Glass’s stomach, right against her lowest ribs, before I close my grip around the handle once more, ensuring I don’t lose control of it.

The impact of the hammer’s golden head against her armor makes a clang so loud that without my power, I’m certain my ears would bleed. As it is, energy splashes across her body, and she flies backward. Her sword’s momentum brings its tip swinging wildly close to my face, but I lean back, evading the steel.

It comes so close, I can almost taste the metal her sword is made from.

It’s clean and pure, and my instincts are suddenly firing.

Every piece of metal these women are wearing and the swords they’re wielding are susceptible to my hammer.

My power may be more extensive than that of other Blacksmiths, but I am like other Blacksmiths at heart: I was born to beat metal into submission.

Glass corrects her balance midair, landing lithely, but the force of my hit sends her sliding farther away from me than I’m sure she would like.

Griffin has now recovered and is coming at me again, this time with a wild swing, as if she intends to slash at me wherever she can make contact. The savage arc of the blade indicates she’s given up on a clean kill.

I rapidly adjust my hammer’s trajectory, jabbing it at her sword, aiming for a full hit of the hammer’s head against the side of the blade.

At the instant of contact, I send a command through my hammer and into her blade.

Submit to my will.

Energy shoots through the sword from my hammer, a stream of golden power.

The blast knocks Griffin backward, causing her to gain air as her body crashes across the clearing.

Her sword is ripped from her hand, spinning wildly away from her.

She crashes into the snow, her landing digging a turret in the white powder.

Her sword lands several paces away from her, neatly dropping to the ground, its tip driving deep into the snow, where it remains upright.

I don’t wait for her groan of pain to reach me.

I swing backward, this time blocking Glaive’s downward cut from behind me—another slashing cut, this one an underhanded strike at my exposed back.

Her blade meets my hammer’s head.

I send another command through the metal.

Obey me.

Her sword flies directly backward, ripping from her hand and swinging in such a violent arc that it nearly slices across her own side. Not that her armor wouldn’t protect her, but the shock on her face is gratifying.

I don’t slow my attack, punching the hammer’s head at her chest.

My power connects with the metal plates.

Get away from me.

Energy splashes across her torso, rippling out through her arms and up her neck, accentuating her wide eyes and open mouth a split second before she crashes back through the snow, tumbling gracelessly through the powder.

I swing back to Glass.

Oh, but she’s observant.

She must have figured out exactly what I’m doing because, with a heave, she drives her sword down into the snow and leaves it there.

Then she begins rapidly peeling off her armor.

The groans of the other two women reach me across the distance, and I’m aware that they’re trying to get up, but even Glaive—whose armor I didn’t directly command—is struggling. The metal in their armor is now weighing them down.

They both begin trying to crawl through the snow toward me, inch by painful inch, but they aren’t making it anywhere fast enough to concern me.

“We can’t go back to our Queen empty-handed and defeated,” Glass says, and I’m surprised by the tension around her eyes now, the hint of fear on her face.

If I were willing to leave my current position at Erik’s side, I could easily launch myself across the space between us and attack her before she could get her armor off.

But my right hand remains resolutely pressed to his heart.

I haven’t broken the connection between us once so far, using only my left arm to defend myself and twisting at the waist to angle my hammer as I need.

The other two Valkyries must have taken note of Glass’s actions because they’ve stopped trying to crawl toward me and are now attempting to push off their armor. It’s clinging to their bodies as if by invisible strings, making them grunt and heave with effort.

Despite the freezing cold, Glass doesn’t seem bothered by the snow as she pulls off her boots. Her bare feet sink into the powder, but she doesn’t wince.

She’s now dressed in nothing more than strips of black material wrapped around her breasts and stomach and a pair of short, tight pants in a style I’ve never seen before: cut high at the hips and with a waist that extends upward to meet the bottom of the wrapping around her breasts and upper stomach.

Her sharp gaze rakes across me. She clenches and unclenches her fists as she stretches her neck and rolls her shoulders.

“Will you spread your silver wings, General Glass?” I ask her softly.

Her focus flickers to my hammer, and she gives me a little smile. “Not a chance.”

She takes a deep breath and focuses back on my face, her concentration intense. Only her right hand moves, her fingers unfurling from the fist she made with them.

My heart begins to race as I wait for her to make her move, painfully aware that the other two have now succeeded in pushing off half of their armor.

Farther behind them, Graviter has shrunk up against the trees on the other side of the clearing. There’s only so far he can go, but with my enhanced senses, I can feel his growing fear, the way it seems to increase with every new twitch of Glass’s fingers.

I adjust my hold on my hammer, allowing the handle to slide through my fingers so I’m gripping the handle right beneath the head.

As my fingers brush the underside of the golden block, my power sparks again, flickering around me in bright streams.

My hammer will be my fist, and if I have to shatter her, so be it.

My other hand remains resolutely on Erik’s chest.

I raise my chin at her. “Come on, Glass,” I whisper. “Let’s find out which of us will shatter.”

She moves in a flash.

Taking a quick step back, she launches herself at me, her feet leaving the ground. She gains air, arcing down toward me, her left hand formed into a fist that will surely break my jaw.

But she’s left her right side exposed.

My left hand sweeps across my front, and my stomach muscles bunch, allowing me to lift without losing contact with Erik.

I’m ready to ram the hammer up beneath Glass’s chin and break her face.

At the last moment, she changes direction, an impossible shift of balance that takes her toward my left side. She half-spins, like a spear turning in the air, taking her out of the path of the hammer’s head and directly toward its exposed handle.

Both of her hands close around the onyx shaft.

That’s when she spreads her wings.

They ram into my body, her feathers cutting across my chest like knives. As she wrenches my hammer upward, the impact of her wings knocks me backward.

For the first time since the Valkyries arrived, my right hand leaves Erik’s heart. My body is wrenched away from him, and my legs out from under him.

Within my mind, I’m aware of the pain and damage to my body, but all I can focus on is the way his head and torso hit the snow without me to hold him. The way he’s facing away from me.

The lost contact feels like I’m being ripped apart.

I must be screaming. I must be bleeding. My instincts are raging as I try to pour commands through the hammer.

Break! Shatter! Burn!

Destroy her wings!

But my grip on the hammer loosened the moment I gained air, and just as I tried to scream commands through it, my hand opened.

There’s air between me and my hammer. Just enough that I’m not in contact with it.

I fly backward; the wind rushing around my ears before I hit the snow with a hard thud , propelled so far from Erik that I’m now a full ten paces away.

I’ve landed on my back. General Glass drops onto me. One of her knees lands on my chest, and the other on the snow next to me.

My ribs shift under her weight. One of them pops .

For those awful seconds when my hand opened around my hammer, the air around me went dark. In the seconds before I scream at my fingers to tighten again, I may as well be human.

In that heartbeat, I catch the desperation in Glass’s eyes. She didn’t manage to wrench the hammer entirely from my grip, so this heartbeat is all she has before my strength will surge again.

Her wings are spread. Her left hand shoots toward my neck faster than I can send a command to my hand.

Her move weakens her hold on the hammer, but?—

Fuck!

My body seizes with shock the second her palm touches my throat.

Pain strikes through me from my heart, a horrible burning agony that pulls and pulls out from me.

Above me, Glass’s lips are pressed together into a hard line, and her eyes gleam as silver as her wings.

My left hand is still wrapped around my hammer and now her wings are vulnerable, but I can’t seem to draw on my power.

I can’t move.

I gasp, choke, and try to breathe, unable to scream as my life streams away from me.